The present invention relates to electronic photography, and in particular to a digital camera that translates recorded voice annotations to text annotations when external power is provided.
Digital cameras have become popular for both professional and amateur photography. As digital cameras have become more popular, their sophistication has increased, allowing additional features. For example, some digital cameras allow the user to record voice annotations. However, when the pictures are printed, the voice annotations are lost, since recorded voice cannot be usefully displayed on a printed picture. A need arises for a way in which a voice annotation may be recorded when a picture is taken, but a text annotation is included with the picture when it is printed or transmitted.
The present invention is a digital camera which allows voice annotations to be recorded for each picture, but which includes text annotations with each such picture when the picture is transmitted from the camera. The digital camera of the present invention includes an image sensing apparatus operable to receive light comprising an image and output image data representing the image, a first memory operable to store the image data, a sound sensing apparatus operable to receive a sound and output sound data representing the sound, wherein the sound is speech and the sound data is voice data, a second memory operable to store the voice data, a third memory operable to store text data; and a voice recognition apparatus operable to access the second memory, translate the stored voice data into text data and store the text data in the third memory, when the digital camera is provided with external power. Because the voice to text translation process is compute-intensive, and thus, power-consuming, the translation is deferred until external power is provided.
The present invention may further include an I/O adapter operable to access the first memory and the third memory and transmit the stored image data and the stored text data, when the digital camera is communicatively connected to an external device.
It is preferred that the image data represent a picture, the recorded voice data represent a voice annotation associated with the picture, and the text data is a text annotation associated with the picture.
In one embodiment, the voice recognition apparatus includes a microprocessor operable to execute image capture routines, voice recording routines and voice recognition routines. The microprocessor may be further operable to execute data transfer routines.
In one embodiment, external power and communications connections are provided by a cradle assembly.